My cassette copy of the ' Tweens' 16 Lovers Lane from 1988 has long been unrolled, but I do remember two standouts from it: "Streets Of Your Town" (great hook and backing vox) and "Was There Anything I Could Do?" ("She went out with a paint box/ Paints the chapel blue/She went out with match sticks/Torched a car wash, too"). The same jangly M.O. colors this expanded reissue of their '83 full-length. If REM's back-to-back masterstrokes Murmur and Reckoning had brushed the new wave nervy twitches of The Church's debut (Of Skins And Heart) and The Cure's early sides, then the UGA art-schoolers' walk through the woods might've taken a different path. "Two Steps, Step Out" considerably ups the distance of The Proclaimers' later stroll with a catchy refrain ("I'd walk a hundred miles, a thousand miles, a million miles"). "Cattle And Cane" is an acoustic/electric folksy nugget that no doubt dented the charts of many a college campus. "By Chance" is worth taking due to its busy percussion. The eight songs comprising the bonus disc make for a fine album themselves, led by the pop-yet-not pounds "Hammer The Hammer" and "Man O'Sand To Girl O'Sea."
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